Celebrating dim sums at Stix

Once again, Stix at Hyatt Regency Chennai is celebrating a dim sum festival. This time, they brought in the big guns, Sichuanese Sous Chef Zhang Yajun from the award winning China House at Grand Hyatt Mumbai. The chef speaks good English, is an avid traveller and has 18 years of culinary experience. He's been in India for the last 11 and considers himself half an Indian!!

Chef Zhang

Chef Zhang's dim sums are well crafted. There are 20 varieties on the menu every day, half of them vegetarian. The menu also includes a couple of varieties that restaurants in Chennai do not serve. We, of course, tried most of the non-veg ones and a couple of the veg dim sums for the purpose of this review.

We loved them all! 

Seafood, asparagus & coriander soup

My friend and I shared a bowl of seafood, asparagus and coriander soup. It was light, flavoursome and the asparagus slices added texture.

Crystal prawn with fish egg; steamed spinach prawns; lobster dumpling

Our dim sum feast started with the steamed ones. The covering for the crystal prawn and the lobster were translucent, though not as transparent as they usually are. Each opening of the lobster dumpling was topped with a tiny diced vegetable. The spinach prawn was delicious, as were the others.

Vegetarian delights - edamame dumpling; steamed tofu dumpling.  

Pan-fried radish cake

Radish cake is one of my favourites but this was not the hawker stall variety. The radish cubes in Chef Zhang's version were suitably chewy, chilli bits and garlic added oodles of flavour. What a very welcome surprise.

Pork pot sticker; fried black pepper chicken dumpling

The other snack we flipped for was the pork pot sticker with its crisp base and generous amount of filling. Deep fried black pepper chicken dumpling was a work of art. Two kinds of dough go into making this and the pleated edge was shaped into a fan. It held on to its shape during the frying process and surprisingly, was not at all greasy. The sesame seeds were a nice touch, both in presentation and taste.   

Alternate layers of pastry & filling in the pan-fried chicken pancake

Kung pao chicken bao

We were so glad to have ordered this beauty - Kung pao chicken bao. The buns looked like seashells and the filling was so absolutely delish. The sauce was dark and had the aroma and flavour of smoked chillies and the meat was very juicy. We couldn't stop licking our fingers when it had been devoured. What yumminess!!!

You've got to hurry because Chef Zhang will make his dim sums at Chennai only till June 10th and only for dinner. A basket of dim sum is priced between 475/++ and 575/++.
Stix will serve its regular menu too during the dim sum promotion.

Reach Stix at 91 44 6100 1608/ 91 9176633310 for reservations.